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May 11th, 2015

The last thing you need is a robust, sustainable culture. Next time you use ‘sustainable’, add ‘but not too much’.

Robustness has always been a logical desire when it comes to the company and its culture in particular. But too […]
May 10th, 2015

The brutal power of the analogy as a shortcut to the road of Unthinking

Paul Krugman, professor, journalist and Nobel Prize, in his column in the New York Times has mentioned an economic analogy […]
May 9th, 2015

There have been losers in the UK General Election and none of them are a political party.

There have been clear losers in the UK General Election yesterday. People who should go back and do a good […]
May 8th, 2015

‘Powered by Viral Change TM‘: a Social Transformation Platform for the organization of the 21st Century

Viral Change™: Our social movement platform plus ‘Operating System’ is 15 year old this year. When we started to work […]
May 7th, 2015

No list of ‘The best treats of X’ or ‘The 10 habits of Y’ surprises me anymore.

1. These 9 features (below) define a good manager in Google. 2. You have Google as a model company ( […]
May 6th, 2015

Listening is more than being silent. Learn to spot the listener, and call out the ones who pretend.

There is a difference between listening and just waiting to speak. You can spot people doing either. Some people don’t […]
May 5th, 2015

Steal ideas, implant with caution, observe, tweak, observe again, never close your eyes.

Innovation and renewal requires your windows open to the world. Plenty of organizations out there are experimenting with models, far […]
May 4th, 2015

The battle for what? The UK General Election has an accounting narrative. My post Charlie Hebdo election placard reads: Je ne suis pas un numéro.

The UK general election is in its final days. Even if you don’t live in the UK, what is happening […]
May 3rd, 2015

Trophy employees, their sugar company and its useful idiots

In any organization they are positive deviants (deviants from expected norms, who achieve results ) and other ‘statistical abnormalities’, by […]
May 2nd, 2015

‘We are both saying the same with different words’. No, we are not.

Groupthink arrives when the group agrees with itself on everything, dismisses the external ones who disagree, ignores warnings, ignores facts, […]
May 1st, 2015

The halo effect of a budget cut: thinking postponed

A budget cut is a budget cut. Everybody recognises one when in front of one. Organizations don’t impose them just […]
April 30th, 2015

Single track thinking, the road to a sure end (if your don’t care whether it’s the right end or the wrong end)

‘Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop’. That was Lewis Carroll advice […]
April 29th, 2015

Will ‘Enterprise Social Networks’ fail in the same way as ‘Knowledge Management’ did? It’s behaviours, stupid.

Knowledge management was an idea hijacked by IT. When management of knowledge became buying the Mother of All Portals, and […]
April 28th, 2015

Some companies are run as a Permanent Focus Group

In some organizations, daily life and the day to day meetings feel like a Permanent Focus Group. People spend their […]
April 27th, 2015

Take over a grey area, adopt an orphan project, sponsor an idea in exile

The Business English language (yes, there is one) uses the word accountability often associated to the word ‘taking’, as in […]
April 26th, 2015

Some restructuring does not seem part of the solution. Bigger problems continue to appear. And the Fire Brigade has now a permanent sit in the Boardroom.

Stanislaw Andreski ( 1919-2007) in his little big book ‘Social Science as Sorcery’, writing about the influence of the social […]
April 25th, 2015

2 real cases of Business Surrealism

We offered a client unlimited support for a project, for a fixed cost. The clienr understood. Corporate Procurement didn’t. It […]
April 24th, 2015

The corrosion of logic: from ‘why-what-how’, to ‘how, what, maybe why’.

There was a time when the logic of things started with a why, followed with a what and ended in […]
April 23rd, 2015

The problem is that all we say is that ‘the problem is’. There is no ‘and’.

We need to improve communication is not the same as this is what we need to do to improve communication, […]
April 22nd, 2015

Too-too land is a prison and too-too managers are its guards. This is what life there looks like.

The company is too big to change. We are too small to compete. It’s too early for a Leadership Development. […]